Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1887-09-01
The Bible in the Public Schools.

u. 1LSHSStST--1 lCou with SOAnO III
terest the last article written by Thorn
as Callahan, who classify among the
literary gymnasts.
He directs his literary dumbells this
time against the reading of the bible in
public schools, but like all of his pre-
decessors and criterions from the days
of Doubling Thomas to the present, he
has failed, miserably failed, to produce
a legitimate argument against the time
hoDored custom of reading the bible in
the public schools. Under the word
Pedagogy" he attempts to answer the
all important question, " Should the
bible be read in the public schools?"
To maintain the negative of this
question it will take wiser head and
a more liberal education than is pos
sessed by the writer in question, for he
acknowledges frankly that after sixty
years of life, forty-seveD of which he
had spent in making a system attic
study of the bible and of the applica-
ton of Gods truth to the souls of men.
that he fails to see any good the read
ing of the bible in the public schools
has done. Well, it may be that he
cannot see the good, for these things
are spiritually discerned only. With
him the grinding is indeed low, the
windows darkened, the silver cord
loosened and the golden bowl badly
cracked, if not broken. I'm going into
what he calls discussion of the SUBJ
ject, he at once begins to beg the ques-
ton by making the following admis-
sions: First, that religion as taught
by the bible is Indispensable to our con-
tinued existence as nation of freemen.
He also acknowledges that 1t is impos-
sible to secure a thorough literary
cultivation without the support of a
religious factor, as it is for the human
subject to continue to live when the
connection between the heart and the
brain is destroyed. He then begins
what may be properly termed BOOM
erang argument, and like that we'll
known instrument it returns to the
sources from which it comes without
harming the enemy, but to the great
discontinue of the man who threw it.
AS soon as the above admissions are
made and the glazing facts dawn upon
him he tries to excuse himself by say
ing that owing to the spirit of the age
he has right to inquire into the found
alton of beliefs. He then gives the
following sylogism as the foundation
of these beliefs: "Religion is a neces-
sity to the existence of the state.
| "Whatever we need in the state
must be introduced into the common
schools.
1.-THE bible under God produces relig-
ion.
"Theretore, the bible should be in
troduced into the common schools. /"
Once more the boomerang strikes the
subject and not the object, the truth,
and he is driven to the extremity of
denouucing as false the admissions that
admissions as given above and then
read the following statement from the
same writer: The sylogism is practic-
ally false in every particular; even
what truths it contains by being placed
in wrong connections becomes practic-
ally falsehoods.
The truth crushed to the earth. says
one writer, will rise again. Jesus saith
unto him, 81 am the way, the truth,
and the life."
Let the literary gymnast throw as
many obstacles in the way as he will,
yet the truths contained in the sylo-
gism as given will stand as it has stood
from the days of creation till every foe
is vanquished.
| The writer further argues that al
though moral training of its citizens
is absolutely necessary to the existen ce
of state and the complete education
of an individual, that the home and
not the public school is the place to
receive the most important element of
their education-a religious training.
| Yet, with the next stroke of the pen,
he denies the adequacy Of his home
rule, and says that the Sabbath school
is a continuance of the church to remedy
failure of the family to furnish to It's
members adequate religious instruc-
| tons.
Now, if this be true of the church, is
not the same true of the state? The
church and the state have long since
by bitter experience, ascertained the
fact, that three-fourths of the children
are sent TO school without any religious
training whatever, and sixty per cent.
of this number comes without, appar-
emily, moral training!
According to the gentleman's own
argument, the teacher, standing as he
does i'm place of the parents, has right.
and it is his indispensable duty, to
train his pupils morally and physically.
as well as intellectually. In proportion
as the church and the state departs
from the principle laid down by that
Scotch-Irish community, OF which the
writer in question claims to be an Off
spring, they depart from the true basis
of all good society, and from the teach.
ing and examples laid down by the
most eminent and profound scholars of
the worlds history.
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